Heredity of Taste. Soseki Natsume
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Название: Heredity of Taste

Автор: Soseki Natsume

Издательство: Ingram

Жанр: Биографии и Мемуары

Серия:

isbn: 9781462904747

isbn:

СКАЧАТЬ

      Sōseki Natsume (1867-1916) is widely considered the foremost novelist of the Meiji period (1868-1914). After graduating from Tokyo Imperial University in 1893, Soseki taught high school before spending two years in England on a Japanese government scholarship. He returned to lecture in English literature at the university. Numerous nervous disorders forced him to give up teaching in 1908 and he became a full-time writer for the Asahi newspaper. In addition to fourteen novels, Soseki wrote haiku, poems in the Chinese style, academic papers on literary theory, essays, autobiographical sketches and fairy tales.

      Sammy I. Tsunematsu is founder and curator of the Sōseki Museum in London, and the translator of several of Sōseki's works. He has also researched and published widely on the Japanese artist Yoshio Markino, who was a contemporary of Sōseki's living in London at the beginning of the twentieth century. Tsunematsu has lived in Surrey, England, for thirty years.

      Published by Tattle Publishing, an imprint of Periplus Editions (HK) Ltd, with editorial offices at 364 Innovation Drive, North Clarendon, VT 05759 U.S.A. and 61 Tai Seng Avenue #02-12, Singapore 534167.

      Originally published as Shumi no iden,

      1906 English translation © Sammy I. Tsunematsu, 2004

      First Tuttle edition, 2004

      All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission of the publisher.

      ISBN: 978-1-4629-0474-7 (ebook)

      The Translator would like to acknowledge the assistance of John Edmondson who kindly read through the English version and made many helpful changes.

      Printed in Singapore

      Distributed by:

      North America, Latin America and Europe

      Tuttle Publishing

      364 Innovation Drive, North Clarendon, VT 05759-9436.

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      www.periplus .com

      This book is dedicated to Yōko Matsuoka McClain,

       granddaughter of Sōseki Natsume, who encouraged us

       to translate her grandfather's work

      OTHER TUTTLE CLASSICS

      BY THE SAME AUTHOR

      And Then

      Botchan

      Grass on the Wayside

      Hearing Things

      I Am a Cat I, II, III

      Inside My Glass Doors

      Kokoro

      Light and Darkness

      Mon

      My Individualism and The Philosophical

      Foundations of Literature

      Record of Chips and Shavings

      Spring Miscellany and London Essays

      Ten Nights of Dream

      The Three-Cornered World

      To the Spring Equinox and Beyond

      The 210th Day

      The Wayfarer

      Contents

      Introduction 9

      The Heredity of Taste 17

      Sōseki, an Anti-War Writer

      In the spring of 2000, to recognize the millennium, the Asahi Shimbun newspaper conducted a nation-wide survey asking the Japanese people who they considered was the best Japanese writer of the past one thousand years. Sōseki Natsume was the first choice among readers. Murasaki Shikibu, author of The Tale of Genji, was ranked second. Matsuo Bashō, the great haiku poet, ranked sixth. Similarly, there was a great outcry in the fall of 2002 when proposed high school textbooks submitted for approval by the Ministry of Education did not include selections from the oeuvre of Sōseki Natsume. Clearly Sōseki is a literary institution in Japan, an author whose work has spoken to generations of Japanese readers, an author who, eighty years after his death, still dominates Japan's literary scene.

      More perhaps than any other Japanese writer, the bulk of Sōseki's works have been translated into English, and yet there still remain a host of letters, diaries, poems, and short early works which are unknown outside Japan. These early works are of particular interest because they reveal the extent to which Sōseki was a protean, ever experimental writer, seeking a medium, themes, and methodology that would allow him to express his ideas clearly.

      Nearly four decades ago, Professor Edwin McClellan performed a great service when he outlined for English readers the progression of themes in Sōseki's major novels. In this progression, McClellan shows a particular line of philosophical development in Sōseki's work. Today, we have a chance to look at Sōseki's shorter work and see the rich creativity and diversity he brought to his writing.

      Shumi no iden, translated here as The Heredity of Taste, was written in December 1905 just following the conclusion of the Russo-Japanese War the previous September, and it stands as Sōseki's response to this great and tragic СКАЧАТЬ